Q-class Combat Support Ships, also known as Military Auxiliaries form a support or tertiary element of combatant naval fleet forces.

They serve as combat multipliers enhancing the primary line combatants of battleships and cruisers and the secondary line of various escorts.

Many call them auxiliaries or tertiary combatants. Despite the moniker "tertiary combatant," they are not meant to participate in any form of open combat, but only in self defense actions as their primary role is to support secondary and primary naval combatants.

Almost any civilian hull can be redesignated as a Q-class if meant for dedicated military service as an auxiliary.

These craft have a wide variety of uses from cargo, fuel and passenger transport; policing; customs enforcement; to search and rescue operations and support.

This class of vessel includes a variety of smallcraft including militarized pinnaces, shuttles, cutters, ship's boats, and all other non-jump capable spacecraft of less than 100 tons. The exception to this are system defense boats whose role is system defense. Often the names are used interchangeable, but they are often classified by role and size.

These craft are tertiary combatants at best and are not intended to operate near the battlefront for any length of time. They are armed for self defense at best, and typically must evade line combatants to survive. Their mission tasking is to support and enhance the missions of primary and secondary combatants.

Militarized smallcraft are relatively rare, but often perform important combat support functions such as communication relay points, sensory reconnaissance, logistics management, and a number of other important roles.

A timeless military strategem has been the concept of fighting forces as dragons, mythical monsters with very dangerous, fighting front end conceptualized as teeth and a support, logistics end conceptualized as a tail. The ratio of fighting forces to support forces is called the teeth-tail ratio. Many elite forces maximize the ratio, famously forcing cooks and clerks to employ the weapons of war when pressed for manpower.

However, most fighting forces are not elite and are optimized at the other end of the teeth-tail spectrum with many logistics and support forces for every front line combatant. For every first line naval capital ship, a very wide variety of secondary and tertiary combatants exist including I-class Combat Transports and Q-class Combat Support Ships, which include repair vessels, replenishment ships, recovery ships, intelligence vessels, scouts, couriers, assault transports, and all nature of other vessels that function as the "tail" to the spinal mount-carrying "teeth" of ship-killing capitals...